“Roaring twenties”

“Roaring twenties” Students will learn how Americans entered a new age of prosperity in the “Roaring Twenties.”

Adjusting to peace: 1919-1921 • Disillusioned by the war, Americans returned to their traditional policy of isolationism in foreign affairs – refusing to become involved in other nations’ disputes or problems.

The red scare • Palmer Raids. In January 1920, Attorney General Mitchell Palmer ordered the round-up of 4,000 suspects in several cities without warrants. His assistant, J. Edgar Hoover, directed the raids. Palmer arrested men he accused of plotting to overthrow the government. Most were later released, but 600 were eventually deported.

The red scare • The Sacco & Vanzetti Case. Two Italian immigrants, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, were convicted of committing murder during a robbery. The robbery was allegedly committed to obtain funds for an anarchist revolution.

Rise of nativism & racism • The Red Scare, anarchist bombings, and the Sacco and Vanzetti trial contributed to the rise of nativism – a dislike of foreigners. • The Ku Klux Klan were hostile to immigrants, Catholics, Jews, and African Americans.

prohibition • One of the most outspoken voices of the Temperance Movement was Frances Willard. Her own brother had been an alcoholic and in 1879 she was elected as President of the National Women’s Temperance Union. In 1882, Willard organized the Prohibition Party and by 1919 had created efficient pressure to persuade enough states to ratify the 18th amendment – banning the sale of alcoholic drinks.

prohibition • Fewer than 14 years after the ban on alcoholic drinks went into effect, Prohibition was repealed by the Twenty-first Amendment (1933). The experience of Prohibition demonstrated that unpopular laws are sometimes unenforceable.

Scopes “monkey trial” of 1925 • The Scopes “Monkey Trial” drew nationwide attention for pitting older religious beliefs against new scientific theories. The state was represented by William Jennings Bryan as special prosecutor, while the famed attorney Clarence Darrow defended Scopes.

New restrictions on immigration The Immigration Acts of 1921, 1924, & 1929 were basically designed to keep out immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe. These laws established quotas for each separate nationality, based on America’s existing ethnic composition. Under this system, Great Britain, Ireland, and Germany were allowed the greatest number of immigrants, while the number of “New Immigrants” was severely limited. Asian immigration was barred altogether.

eugenics • Eugenics was a pseudo-scientific belief that the human race could be improved by breeding. It was supposed that superior parents would have even better children. • A leading proponent of eugenics, Charles Davenport, thought that by preventing the mentally ill from having children, mental illness in the U.S. might be sharply reduced. • Social Darwinists believed that different human races competed for survival just as different plants and animals did in the natural world.

Social darwinism

The emergence of new values • Women - Young women began to smoke and drink in public. They rejected restrictive clothing and instead adopted the new look of the “flapper”. Flappers wore short dresses that revealed their body shapes as well as their legs and arms. Their hair was short and choppy, and they also wore a lot of make up.

The emergence of new values • Tin Pan Alley – Around 1910, NYC began to emerge as the capital of popular music publishing. Tin Pan Alley, a section of NYC, was the area where song-writing and musical ideas mixed together to form American popular music.

The emergence of new values Youth and the Lost Generation – Sinclair Lewis, in Main Street and Babbitt, ridiculed the narrowness and hypocrisy of American life. F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote The Jazz Age and The Great Gatsby – hinting that the search for purely material success often leads to tragedy.

The Great Migration • The two decades from 1910 – 1930 witnessed the movement of about two million African Americans out of the South to the “Promised Land” of the Northeast and Midwest. They left in search of jobs in the nation’s growing industrial cities and to escape sharecropping, tenant farming, and the deep racism of the South.

The Harlem renaissance • The 1920s is often referred to as the Jazz Age, reflecting the great importance of this new form of African-American music. The general awakening of African-American culture in these years has become known as the Harlem Renaissance.

African-American literature • Langston Hughes & Alain Locke – poet and writer that expressed this new pride in their heritage, while attacking racism. They felt their accomplishments in literature and art demonstrated their value as a people. • Countee Cullen – won more major literary prizes than any other African-American writer of the 1920s. • Zora Neal Hurston – in 1937, she published what is considered her greatest novel, Their Eyes Watching God.

Marcus garvey Jamaican-born political activist whose goal was the total liberation of African people around the world. The disillusionment that came from those who had migrated to the North and the frustrations of struggling to cope with urban life set the scene for Garvey’s Back-to-Africa Movement, which advocated that African Americans should return to Africa.

Charles Lindbergh The first person to fly across the Atlantic Ocean in 1927, Lindbergh made his historic flight in a single-engine plane. He took off from Roosevelt Field on Long Island, traveling through fog and ice, landed his plane 33 hours later in Paris on May 20. His airplane “The Spirit of St. Louis had carried him over 3,600 miles.

Essential questions • What difficulties did Americans have in adjusting to peace after the war? • What factors sparked the prosperity of the 1920s? • How did the policies of Republican Presidents differ from those of the Progressive Presidents? • In what ways did the 1920s witness a conflict of values? • What impact did the “Harlem Renaissance” have on the African-American community in America?

“Roaring twenties”